Reader Challenge - 01 Apr 1999

Flex Your Intellectual Muscle

Command-Line Shortcuts
[Editor's Note: Solve this month's Windows NT problem and get the chance to win $100 or a copy of one of the author's books about NT. Email your solutions to [email protected]. Include your full name, mailing address, and connection to NT (e.g., administrator, user). Because of the number of entries, we cannot reply to all respondents. Look for the solution to this month's problem in the July issue.]

Joe and Moe comprise the entire Help desk staff for the BizzyBiz company. Joe considers himself a true computer nerd and carries the title with pride. Piles of reference books cover his desk. BizzyBiz employees refer to Moe as "the old curmudgeon." He has a sign over his desk that reads, "DOS Will Rise Again."

One day, a human resources (HR) employee comes to Joe and Moe for help. She wants to save time and paper, so she created several folders on her department's Windows NT 4.0 server to hold all the documents the HR staff distributes to employees. Now she needs to know how to give employees access to the folders. Joe walks her through the steps for creating a share: Open My Computer, open the drive that contains the folders, right-click each folder, select Sharing from the shortcut menu, and so on. Moe mumbles to himself, "Using the command line to create shares is faster."

A few minutes later, the chief executive officer's secretary leans in Joe and Moe's doorway and tells them that when she opened NT Explorer, she noticed she had only a couple of megabytes of free disk space. "What do I do?" she asks. Joe suggests she delete all the temporary and document backup files. He tells her to open Explorer, select drive C, press F3, and enter

*.tmp

Moe interrupts, "But she'll have to wait for the search to finish, select the files, then delete them. Using the command line to delete the files is faster."

Problem
Moe is correct; using the command line is faster for these tasks. What commands do you use to create a share and to delete temporary and document backup files? Be sure to include the necessary switches, and explain each switch you use.

JANUARY WINNERS
Congratulations to Robert Jordan, a systems engineer in Rancho Cordova, California, and to Steve Hegg, a group technology director in Chicago, Illinois. Robert won first prize of $100 for the best solution to the January Reader Challenge. Steve won second prize of a copy of Windows NT Troubleshooting (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1998).

Problem
Judy, a member of the IS team at Golden Goose Supermarkets, is the company's self-designated Windows 2000 (Win2K) tester. She spends a lot of time in front of the server and workstation on which she's installed the latest beta. Other members of the IS department are aware of her enthusiasm, partly because of the cute messages she tapes to the walls ("Bye-Bye PDC" and "Forests and Trees") and partly because she lectures incessantly about the need to prepare the company's Windows NT 4.0 system for upgrading.

Mike is the IS department's printing maven. Yesterday, a new printer arrived for the accounting department. This network printer has a NIC and requires no computer hookup. Judy left Mike a note that said, "Think TCP/IP." Mike agrees that installing the printer on the TCP/IP protocol is a good idea, because the company is planning to move to Win2K (which is TCP/IP-centered). What steps are necessary to install a TCP/IP printer?

Solution
First, install any printer software that came with the printer and specify TCP/IP as the protocol. Give the printer an IP address, using a number lower than 199 (typically 192) for the first part of the address. On some printers, you can assign an IP address on the printer's front panel. Then, add TCP/IP printing services and configure the printer in the Printers folder.

To add TCP/IP printing services, open the Network applet in Control Panel and select the Services tab. Click Add, and select Microsoft TCP/IP Printing. Click OK, close the Network dialog box, and restart the computer.

To configure the printer, open the Printers folder and double-click Add Printer. Then, move through the wizard. Select My Computer, and click Next. Click Add Port, select LPR Port (LPR is the abbreviation for a line printer), and click New Port. In the dialog box that opens, enter the printer's IP address in the top text box and a name for the printer in the bottom text box. Click OK. (If you receive an error message about communications, you can ignore it.) Close the dialog box, and click Next. In the next wizard window, select the printer driver. In the final window, configure the printer for sharing. To complete the configuration, click Finish.